TOURISM ENTERPRISES' CRISIS PREPAREDNESS: ANALYSIS OF PLANNING PRACTICES BEFORE AND AFTER THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an unprecedented challenge to the global tourism industry and highlighted the importance of crisis preparedness. This study aims to analyze the crisis preparedness of tourism enterprises by examining business continuity planning and crisis management practices before and after the pandemic. The empirical basis of the study was a survey of 368 respondents from tourism companies in more than 40 countries. The results showed that before the pandemic, only 37.5% of companies had a written business continuity plan or crisis management plan. After the pandemic, 62% of respondents reported developing or updating such plans. An analysis of plan components revealed that the most common elements were customer communication strategies (18.6%), emergency response plans (18.0%), and the creation of crisis response teams (16.7%). A qualitative analysis of the responses revealed a heterogeneity of approaches: from formal plans to intuitive reactions to the situation. The findings have practical implications for the development of recommendations for increasing the resilience of tourism enterprises to future crises and indicate the need to institutionalize crisis planning practices in the industry. The scientific novelty of the study differs from previous works which mainly focused on individual countries or segments: a comparative cross-cultural analysis is conducted on tour operators, travel agencies and hotel enterprises at the global level. The results are supplemented with specific scientific recommendations for managers, industry associations and government agencies to accelerate the institutionalization of crisis planning.